Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje [21]
Dorn has little of value but bets, and Autry, who now has three aces, raises. Cooper begins to sing quietly, ‘You’re gonna run to the rock for rescue, there will be no rock …’ and calls Autry’s bet. Dorn folds. The game has been slowed to a crawl.
Cooper burns the next card before dealing the fourth street. It’s an inconsequential card—an eight of diamonds—which doesn’t alter the strength of the hands; it will simply create another round of betting.
Got any family? Autry asks Cooper. He has been X-raying the young man’s nature.
No family, Cooper says quietly.
Got a girl?
Haven’t got a girl. No, sir. Cooper clicks his tongue. You a married man?
Yes, I am.
Autry makes another large bet. Coop contemplates, shuffles his chips. Contemplates some more, and calls. It is about nine-thirty, and there is almost $100,000 in the pot, with nearly that amount again sitting in front of the two remaining players. Now even Autry is silent, and Coop deals out the last card—the River—his mind whispering it as he begins to turn it over. He will burn down Autry, humiliate him, with this humble seven of hearts.
Along with the communal cards, face-up on the board, Autry now has a full house, three aces and two sevens. He goes to town and moves all his remaining chips into the pot. Coop calls him. They put down their hands, Coop revealing his sevens. Voilà, he says.
Autry recognizes the dragon full of mockery. Coop pulls in the roughly $300,000, then stands up slowly.
Sit down, son, Autry whispers, a deeper voice.
Sit down, Dorn echoes.
Cooper stays standing, gathering the chips. He looks up at the eye in the sky that he knows is watching them, that he knows never captured what he has already done, and waves to it.
‘You fucking idiot, you’re a child,’ Dorn says. Cooper, catching his real anger, looks at him. Then he walks to the cage and cashes out, watched by them all. Mancini is at the mezzanine railing, looking down.
Cooper bangs the button for the elevator and travels to the eleventh floor, gets out, and takes the stairs down to the parking garage, and searches for Dorn’s car. Headlights blink silently and he walks towards the vehicle. Ruth is sliding over onto the passenger seat. ‘It went okay?’ ‘Yes.’ They drive out of the darkness of the garage into a world of swerving desert electricity. In twenty minutes they are out of the city.
There is war news on the radio all night. Ruth leans against the passenger door, watching him. Cooper, usually a person of humble acts, already feels foolish about his excess. She taps him on the shoulder with her finger, and he wakes from his focus on the road.
You know Sophie’s Choice? Ruth says. The book? I heard the guy who wrote it, on the radio, once. They were asking him what he was working on, but he wouldn’t say. Then, at some point during his excuse for not saying what he was doing, he said, ‘You know, I think I have already written the most intimate and profound book I will ever be able to write. I don’t think I can go as far as that again. From now on I should try comedy. Comedy is not easy, I know. But at least it is not the same road.’ I loved that about him, what that writer said. And I read everything of his after that, but of course there was never to be a comedy. And of course you can’t go back again.
I know that, Coop says quietly, so that she hardly hears it.
Then Ruth sleeps, knowing she has to drive back to Vegas by early morning. Cooper turns the radio knob, looking for further details of the war, but they are paltry. He is aware he has ended his career in Vegas and even Tahoe by winning so blatantly, with so much bravura. The Gentile, in his first